The following position paper - authored by the General Education subcommittee
of Strategic Planning in collaboration with the FA General Education
Committee - was brought to Faculty Senate on Tuesday, March 29, 2005,
via parallel motions from Strategic Planning and the FA General Education
Committee. It will be taken back to departments for commentary and will
be discussed again during the next Faculty Senate meeting on Tuesday,
April 12, 2005.

Introduction

Historical Review of General Education

Circa 1980

1997: pre-semester conversion

1998 and following - the Current Programs

Assessment of Current Programs

Assessment of core courses

Assessment of core-like courses

Assessment of distribution areas

Assessment of university requirements

Course taking patterns

Missing Pieces

Mission, Vision, Goals

Information Technology

Global Issues

Environmental Issues

Constraints on Study Abroad

Avoidance of Fine Arts and Life Science

Lack of support for interdisciplinary
course

General Education Assessment and Revision and NCA

Recommendations

Process for Revision

MnTC Program as a guiding structure

Introduction

The General Education Curriculum at St. Cloud State University was
last revised in 1997 during the transition from the quarter system to
the semester system. The General Education Committee (GEC) for the last
two years has been considering revisions to the current curriculum in
response to faculty and student concerns. These concerns include the
lack of assessable learning outcomes for the curriculum as a whole and
large segments within it, the difficulty students and faculty encounter
in understanding which courses fill which requirements, student course
taking patterns that show an avoidance of science, the pressures exerted
from the introduction of the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum (MnTC), and
several vital academic areas that are not included in the curriculum
(e.g. information technology, global issues, environmental issues, etc.).
The lack of assessable learning outcomes has become acute as we look
toward North Central Accreditation (NCA) review. Consequently, the General
Education subcommittee of the Strategic Planning Committee seeks to begin
a campus-wide discussion of the revision of the General Education Curriculum.
This document serves to lay out the recent history of our current General
Education Curriculum and to explore challenges we face in preparing students
in the 21 st century.

Historical Review of General Education

Much of the structure for our current general education curriculum was
in place by the 1980 academic year and extends back considerably further.
At that time there were required courses in writing skills, speech communication
skills, philosophy, interdisciplinary social science and physical education.
In addition to that were three distribution areas; the humanities, natural
science and mathematics, and social and behavioral science. There were
also general education electives. With the exception of the Diversity
curriculum (MGM to some), the Racial Issues curriculum, and the introduction
of a requirement in mathematics/statistics, the 1980 curriculum is identical
in structure to ours today. The writing requirement is ENGL 191, the
speech communication skills requirement is CMST 192, the required philosophy
course has changed from a series of courses to PHIL 194, the interdisciplinary
social studies course is now 195 Democratic Citizenship, and the physical
education requirement has changed from activity courses to a course dealing
with wellness and lifelong fitness. The distribution areas are still
defined solely based on the departments listed in each area, and the
courses that used to fill the general education electives are now the
notorious "right-hand column" distribution courses.

Starting in 1996, the university began to discuss revising the general
education curriculum as part of the university's conversion from the
quarter system to the semester system. An earlier North Central Accreditation
visit had mentioned that our general education curriculum lacked coherence
and did not provide a common experience for our students. To address
this, the university developed five core competencies: writing skills,
speech communication skills, mathematical or statistical skills, critical
reasoning, and democratic citizenship. Little was actually changed between
the 1997 curriculum and the 1998 curriculum. The philosophy requirement
changed from a list of eight courses to only one. The mathematical or
statistical skills requirement added a set of eight possible courses.
The interdisciplinary social science course requirement was defined as
Democratic Citizenship and includes six courses at this time. If coherence
was achieved, it was achieved by grouping the previous requirements together
to call them a core.

The distribution areas were defined in terms of the affiliation of departments
within the three traditional liberal arts and sciences colleges. Any
department within the College of Fine Arts and Humanities that offered
a distribution course could only do so within the Fine Arts and Humanities
distribution area. Those departments within the College of Social Science,
the College of Business, and the College of Education were restricted
to the Social and Behavioral Sciences distribution area, and those departments
in the College of Science and Engineering were limited to the Natural
Science distribution area.

During this revision, the general education elective courses were removed
as a category, and all of the departments that taught elective courses
were used to create the Right-Hand column courses within the current
curriculum. Doing this preserved the emphasis on the traditional liberal
arts and sciences by requiring that every student take two courses from
the departments that traditionally taught liberal arts and sciences courses.
There were two exceptions to this. The mathematics department asked to
be listed as a right-hand column because they had moved to offering specific
courses within the new core. Environmental and Technological Studies
had courses listed in the Social and Behavioral Sciences area before
the conversion, but because the ETS department is part of the College
of Science and Engineering, all of their courses were moved to the Natural
Sciences distribution area. Furthermore, since their courses were not
part of the traditional sciences, courses from this department were placed
in the right-hand column.

In the revision, the philosophy requirement was tightened to critical
thinking and the interdisciplinary social science requirement was tightened
to Democratic Citizenship. Mathematic or statistical thinking was added
as a skill area and ETS lost its select status within the social science
distribution area. Little else changed, though the system did become
more complicated for the students and advisors with the introduction
of the right and left hand columns.

There were numerous racially motivated disturbances on campus in the
1997-1998 academic year and in response the faculty developed the Racial
Issues curriculum the following year. The Racial Issues curriculum was
the first developed with a mission, goals, and criteria that were assessable.
The following year a taskforce revised the Multicultural, Gender, and
Minority curriculum to the Diversity Curriculum, again developing assessable
mission, goals, and criteria.

Around 2000, the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum (MnTC) was introduced
and all universities are now expected to both offer and accept the MnTC
as a general education curriculum. The MnTC is built around ten goals
that are loosely defined. The university possesses some latitude in how
it chooses to offer the MnTC. At present the university has simply placed
courses approved for the SCSU general education curriculum in goal areas
that appear appropriate. Not all SCSU general education courses are part
of the SCSU MnTC, and several goal areas within the MnTC do not fit well
within our current structure and have only a few courses associated with
them.

Assessment of Current Programs

In Fall 2004, the University prepared an assessment report for the Higher
Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and
Schools (NCA). In preparing that report, information was collected from
departments that offer various general education courses. Concerning
the assessment of general education the report states,

Assessment of the university's general education curriculum has been
limited to the efforts of individual departments. The General Education
Core Curriculum consists of five areas: Written Communications (ENGL
191), Oral Communication (CMST 192), Mathematical/Statistical Reasoning
(MATH 193, STAT 193), Critical Reasoning (PHIL 194), and Democratic Citizenship
(various social-sciences courses with course number 195). Since 2000,
significant assessment has been implemented for the ENGL 191, PHIL 194,
and MATH/STAT 193 courses. The Communication Studies department initiated
its pilot assessment project for CMST 192 in 2002. Assessing the Mathematical/Statistical
Reasoning and Democratic Citizenship components has been more challenging
due to the multiple departments involved in the delivery of these parts
of the curriculum, but the departments have taken responsibility for
building assessment programs into their consideration of their general-education
obligations.

The report goes on to detail the efforts of departments in assessing
individual courses. Assessment of distribution areas is primarily being
done only at the individual course level. The Racial Issues Committee
has made some strides in assessing the Racial Issues Curriculum; however,
no assessment beyond individual course assessment has been undertaken
for other parts of the general education program.

An additional complication is that there are at least three general
education curricula to assess. Students can meet their general education
requirements at SCSU through our General Education Curriculum, our Honors
Program, or the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. There has been no assessment
to date of the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum. The Honors Program has
ongoing assessment.

The most serious limit to assessing the general education curriculum
as a whole or its five major subparts (i.e. core, diversity, and three
distribution areas) is the lack of assessable goals and learning outcomes
for the curriculum or its major parts. Of the five subparts listed above,
only the diversity curriculum has established goals and criteria that
are assessable.

Information on the course-taking patterns of students with regard to
the general education curriculum has been collected in two forms. The
College of Business collected data on the credit generation within all
general education courses from the Fall of 1998 through Spring 2001.
Members of the Mathematics and Statistics departments compiled data on
the average number of semesters completed by a student before they completed
a given general education core requirement. A synopsis of each of these
data sets is attached to this paper. The COB report on credit taking
behavior indicates that students are on average meeting the distribution
requirements by taking 9 credits in Area A and C and only 6 credits in
Area B. There are twice as many credits generated in Area A and C courses
as there are in Area B. This is a result of student course taking patterns
and not course availability. The report also indicates that the percentage
of credits generated by left-hand column courses in each area are as
follows; Area A 79%, Area B 85%, and Area C 73%. The data collected on
completion times for the core courses indicates that the average number
of semesters to completion for the Core courses and university requirements
are as follows; Core 1, 2.1 semesters, Core 2, 2.4 semesters, Core 3,
2.7 semesters, Core 4, 3.2 semesters, Core 5, 2.3 semesters, PESS 122,
3.6 semesters, and Racial Issues, 3.5 semesters. We are very close to
meeting the university's goal of having students complete their Core
1 and Core 2 requirements in their first year; however, we have considerable
work to do in regards to meeting the same goal for Racial Issues.

Missing Pieces

Much of the university's general education program largely resembles
that of the 1980s. No mission statement or goals have been developed
for the general education program as a whole, the core curriculum, or
any of the distribution areas. Five criteria have been developed for
establishing what constitutes a general education course, and any course
approved for inclusion in the general education curriculum must meet
at least three of the five criteria. Only two pieces within the curriculum
(Diversity and Racial Issues curricula) have assessable mission statements,
goals, and criteria. The distribution areas have never been defined,
and no criterion for inclusion of a course within a distribution area
exists except for the college affiliation of the department that offers
the course. The university requires all students to take a laboratory
science course, but has never defined what that means or provided a set
of guidelines to determine what constitutes a laboratory course.

Some faculty members believe that our current general education curriculum
does not address a few key areas that are important to students in the
21 st century. These include information technology and research methods,
global issues, environmental issues, and social responsibility. Additionally,
it is possible to complete the general education program and never be
exposed to the fine arts or a life science. Development of general education
mission and vision may help guide us in deciding these issues.

As a university we value study abroad and have developed a strong and
active study abroad program. Our current general education curriculum
often hinders students' participation in study abroad programs. Since
courses meeting distribution requirements are restricted to departments
within a specific college, it is difficult for us to offer the necessary
choices for student to have a complete set of courses to take while on
study abroad programs. Often students who participate in study abroad
program do so by adding a semester or year to their academic programs.

Finally, the current general education curriculum makes it difficult
to offer truly interdisciplinary courses within the distribution areas.
Most of the interdisciplinary courses are listed as right-hand column
courses, and consequently students are not as interested in taking them.
As right-hand column courses, they are less likely to be usable in meeting
a student's general education requirements.

The general education curriculum has many missing pieces. The biggest
of these are the shortcomings in meeting the needs of our students and
the lack of mission statements, goals, assessable learning outcomes,
and key definitions. These are issues that cannot be addressed easily.
The university can either try to patch the current general education
curriculum, or build a curriculum that addresses the issues that students
face now and which will allow the university to effectively assess the
curriculum and to more effectively align with state and regional programs.

General Education Assessment and Revision and NCA

The university has evaluated the general education curriculum through
various mechanisms. Through these evaluations, we have found that there
are too many problems with addressing perceived student needs and with
having sufficient defined learning outcomes to make the major pieces
within the curriculum assessable at this time. We have made progress
on assessing the individual courses and have realized that we cannot
proceed on assessment at the "program" level within general education
until the distribution areas are defined and learning outcomes are developed
for the core and distribution areas. We can at this point either develop
the assessable learning outcomes for our current general education curricula
and then proceed with program level assessment, or we can decide to revise
our general education program to better meet current and future student
educational needs and build in assessable learning outcomes from the
beginning. Either process demonstrates the university's commitment to
continual improvement in quality.

Recommendations

The Strategic Planning Committee makes the following recommendations
concerning general education.

The university should undertake a revision of the general
education curriculum immediately.
The current curriculum was largely developed more than 25 years ago, does
not include several curricular areas relevant to the 21 st century, is difficult
for students and faculty to comprehend, does not have assessable learning
outcomes, and makes transferring to other institutions difficult for students.

The revision should follow the accepted university process for curriculum
development and revision. A synopsis of the current process is attached.

The university should consider the Minnesota Transfer Curriculum
as a possible structure around which to develop the general education
curriculum.
The MnTC addresses most of the missing curricular pieces in our current
general education curriculum. The MnTC has substantial flexibility
to allow the university to design a curriculum that is unique to
SCSU and meets the needs of our students. Assessable goals and learning
outcomes do not exist for the MnTC and through their development
the university could design a strong and unique general education
program. This would also solve many of the transfer issues some of our students
face.

The university should continue to assess the individual
courses within the general education curriculum and look for ways to
further evaluate the major parts and the program as a whole.
The university should continue to track the course taking pattern of
students and the number of semesters to completion for general education
requirements. The similarities in Core 1 and Core 2 suggest that these
two areas could look at combining their assessments efforts. The departments
offering Diversity Courses should begin discussions of how they could
assess the effectiveness of the curriculum in meeting the learning
outcomes that exist for this curriculum.